Alzheimer’s Gene Poses Both Risk — and Benefits

| Newsline

Study suggests role of inflammation in brain disease is complicated

Scientists drilling down to the molecular roots of Alzheimer’s disease have encountered a good news/bad news scenario. A major player is a gene called TREM2, mutations of which can substantially raise a person’s risk of the disease. The bad news is that in the early stages of the disease, high-risk TREM2 variants can hobble the immune system’s ability to protect the brain from amyloid beta, a key protein associated with Alzheimer’s.

The good news, however, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is that later in the disease, when the brain is dotted with toxic tangles of another Alzheimer’s protein known as tau, the absence of TREM2 protein seems to protect the brain from damage. Mice without TREM2 suffer much less brain damage than those with it.